Cast: Charles B. Pierce, Cindy Butler, Chuck Pierce Jr, Jimmy Clem, Serene Hedin
Director: Charles B. Pierce
Genre: Horror
I didn’t know much about the next movie on our list, so I had
to do a bit of research.
The first thing I noticed is that this was featured on an
episode of MST3K which I have not seen yet.
This is good because no matter how bad the movie is, I now have a new
episode of MST3K to watch!
The next thing I noticed is that the name, Charles B. Pierce, seems to come up a lot. He is the
director, writer and ‘star’ of the next movie on our list, Boggy Creek II: And
The Legend Continues, (1985) and he was also the producer on the original movie, The
Legend of Boggy Creek, (1972). However,
the odd thing that I discovered is that it’s not actually the 2nd
movie in this franchise. Boggy Creek II
is technically Boggy Creek III….
In 1977, the sequel, Return to Boggy Creek, was released,
however, Charles B. Pierce was not involved in this movie. Pierce seems to have decided to completely
ignore the original sequel and no reference is made to the 1977 film. Did Charles B. Pierce have a chip on his
shoulder?
On the surface, this to me seems like a vanity project for
Pierce and that he wants to prove to the world that it was wrong for him to be
excluded from the original sequel. Was
this the case? And were the makers of
the 1977 version right to leave Pierce out in the cold?
When Dr. Brant Lockhart, (Charles B. Pierce), receives a
phone call about a mysterious creature who is hairier than Richard Keys, he
decides to investigate. A professor of
Cryptozoology at Arkansas University, he enlists the help of his students Tim,
(Chuck Pierce Jr), Tanya, (Serene Hedin) and for absolutely no reason at all, Tanya’s friend
Leslie, (Cindy Butler).
The group set off in the campest Jeep ever made and set up
base near Boggy Creek. Lockhart tells the
group the many tales he has heard about the creature, each one less interesting
and strung out than the last.
There was the rancher, who lost his herd and saw the beast
running away. Next was a man who came across the creature
whilst changing his tyre. He was so
scared that he went into a coma and never woke up, (can you spot the plot hole
here?). And then there’s the’ hilarious’
story of the man who encountered the creature whilst in the outhouse laying a
cable. He was petrified, but at least he
was in the right place to crap himself.
The last story is mildly interesting, (for those who haven’t
nodded off by this point), as we discover that a sheriff saw the beast in his
back yard, (ooer, sounds a bit rude), and that in actual fact there is a
mini-beast as well. There are 2 Boggy
Creek beasts! Well 1 and 1/3………
Lockhart’s investigations takes him to Hillbilly stereotype,
Old Man Crenshaw, (Jimmy Clem), a man who is a cross between the sheriff from Smokey
and the Bandit and a beach ball in a beard.
Lockhart learns that Crenshaw has seen the beast on numerous occasions
and is keen to learn more. Crenshaw then
asks Lockhart as to whether he is a doctor which can fix people, Lockhart
explains he is the type of doctor you can buy online and you can print
out a snazzy certificate. Unperturbed,
Crenshaw lets Lockhart into a secret.
Crenshaw takes Lockhart into a room and in a cupboard he
reveals that he has kidnapped, (beast-napped?), the youngest beast. Lockhart synapses fire up like a turtle in
treacle: Maybe this is why the beast is angry and maybe this is what he is
looking for……..
Can Lockhart rescue the child beast? Will the daddy beast discover them
first? Will Lockhart ever manage to explain
anything in a couple of simple sentences?
The answer to the last question is no! Or as Lockhart would probably explain: You
see there are 2 different answers you can give to that question. There is the positive answer, the affirmative
if you will, which would usually be indicated by a 'yes', 'yeah' or 'yay', (although
in some circumstances a 'yay' is more an exclamation of joy, it can be used, in
some accounts, to verify the positive answer to a given question). On the opposite side you would have the negative,
(we will assume that an undecided answer would not be given in this case and
that a shrug of shoulders, a 'maybe' or a 'not sure' is out of the equation. Presumably the person asking the question
knows the answer as he watched the rest of the movie and so would probably not
leave it open ended. Anyway, this is why
we will assume that an either 'yes' or 'no', (which is the negative answer which
could be given. Other examples include 'Nay', 'no way' or 'non', (but probably only if you’re French, which we will assume
in this instance that as the person setting the question sets it in English, he
is probably speaking to someone who is English, or who at the very least has a
good grasp of the English language and who would therefore give an answer in
the Anglo negative rather than a more Gallic response)). Anyway, given all variables to this answer
and like I say, as the person setting the question watched the entire movie and
that he is now typing this really long explanation as a parody, (mocking if you
will) of how Lockhart would respond to such a tea-time teaser, we could
naturally assume the answer would be of the negative persuasion and would
probably, (in all likelihood), be 'no'. Or 'yes'; he may be being ironic here……(I think you get the idea).
This rather long paragraph sums up this movie, it is full of
scenes and dialogue which go on for too long and don’t really go anywhere.
For example, there is a scene which a young man falls off
his jet-ski and plunges into the water.
A Jaws-esque scene is played out in which the creature, from his point
of view, is slowly moving towards this guy.
The young guy gets………. back on his jet-ski and moves off safely. No suspense, no drama, no point!
Then there is Lockhart’s very long winded explanation about how
the tracker on his computer works. He
gives, (what seems like), a 10 mins over-elaborate explanation, where ‘the
green box is us, if a blip goes near to the green box, then it is getting
nearer to us’ would have done!
The fault for this lies with Charles B. Pierce who wrote
this script and who seemed to have an OK idea, (the beast is angry as it’s son
has been taken by a human), but just didn’t know how to build the suspense or
plot around it. What we end up with is a
movie which could have been told in half an hour and did not need 90 mins of my
life ruined.
So Pierce isn’t a great writer, is he a good actor?
The answer is no, the script does not help but it feels like
he is reading direct from the page with no thought or emotion into what he is
saying. He has the screen presence of a
glass of water and is just as exciting.
There is no way he can command a lead role and should really have cast
someone else instead of going it alone.
Which leads me onto direction, was he a good director? The answer again is no, Tim, who is actually
Pierce’s real life son, clearly got the role because daddy wrote and directed
the movie. The girls are there for no
other reason than to scream and smoulder and the townsfolk are clearly not
actors and are just, well, townsfolk.
There are many mistakes in the movie. For example, Lockhart clearly calls Tim by
his real name, (Charlie), in one scene.
Surely a director should spot this?
Also I mentioned earlier the plot hole in which a man who slipped into a
coma after he saw the creature, but Lockhart is reciting the story. Surely director and writer should have
spotted that there was no way that Lockhart could know the story if the man had
been in the land of nod as soon as he saw the creature and so had not spoken to
anyone since?!?! Every review I have
read references this mistake, so why the hell did Pierce not spot this?
So was this an ego project?
Yes, absolutely. In actual fact
it feels like a college media studies student who refuses to work in a team,
goes alone and produces an arrogant solo project which interests no-one but
himself. You can’t help but feel that
some of the problems with this movie could have been resolved had Pierce
allowed others to take up roles and to double check things.
Were the makers of the 1977 version right to leave Pierce
out in the cold? On the evidence of this
movie yes they were, although maybe he would have fitted in better as part of a
team. In many ways I wish he had been
involved in the ’77 movie, because that would have saved us from Pierce
thinking he had to prove himself and producing this lifeless movie.
Obviously Pierce believed in his talents and that he could
write, direct AND star in the same movie, however, the evidence is like the costume
for the Boggy Creek beast; it’s not at
all convincing…….
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